News AMD unveils FirePro W9100 16GB GPU

Despite Nvidia's marketing, this is much more akin to the Quadro K6000 really (a 12GB workstation card with 5.2TFLOPS SP but 1.4TFLOPS DP).

As I've mentioned before, if only there were a 12GB Titan, sadly these top end workstation cards are a fair chunk over my budget

 

Workstation graphics are getting increasingly difficult to justify. Aside from the fact that they generally offer more memory, the only thing that really separates them are the drivers. It is possible to buy a gaming GPU and through BIOS updates, convert it into a fully-functional workstation GPU, but, this doesn't work with all models and it wouldn't surprise me if doing this wrong could brick your GPU.

One thing I always found interesting about workstation GPUs is how much of a difference the brand makes. It kind of irritates me because nvidia tends to support the most popular programs, and therefore people assume nvidia is automatically the best choice, when there are some tests where they are noticeably behind the AMD alternative.

What I don't get is why intel doesn't make workstation graphics. They're a little too far behind to make a good gaming GPU, but workstation GPUs tend to be significantly weaker than their gaming counterparts, because they're heavily optimized for the software they're designed for. Intel's GPUs have very low clock rates, why couldn't they do the same?

 

And aside from Phi, they do workstation graphics "lite" on Xeons with onboard graphics. The HD P-series graphics are nothing more than the HD parts with certified drivers.

 

Xeons with a "5" at the end have an IGP with certified drivers. Intel HD4600 is called P4600 on xeon E3-12*5 V3. I do not know if it gives better performances, but the IGP gains ECC memory.

Edit: Ninja-ed by Mister_Tad

 

I've heard of that, but as far as I'm aware that wasn't quite the same thing. IIRC, that was supposed to compete with CUDA and openCL rather than act as an actual GPU. In other words, you wouldn't use CAD software with it, though you might use it for rendering. I could be wrong though. Regardless, it was a stupid product idea. I REALLY wish Intel would realize that x86 isn't the answer to everything.

 

They do have the Intel P4600 /4700 IGP on Xeons E3-12*5 V3, but you can only use it with an Intel C226 based motherboard.

 

I'm like a cat!

There are pretty significant performance gains in apps for which the drivers have been tweaked, but as it's basically the same part as the HD with the same core capabilities, everything else is the same.

I've found the list before (I have a Xeon E3, so was interested), but can't find it now, just "Certified on 15 applications from Autodesk, Adobe, Solid Works, Bentley and Siemens"

EDIT: ah ha! http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/workstations/certified-applications.html

 

Thanks for the list. I'm tempted by an E3 too but that will be for Linux use

 

With Nvidia this hasn't worked since the 7xxx series - yes an appropriate quadro BIOS can be flashed to a contemporary card (? I certainly experimented with 8800GTX&8800GTS versus a FX4600) the benefits are; minimal, non-existent or, in many cases offer a lower frame rate than the GPU before it's alteration.

Can't comment on ATI/AMD

 

If the hardware is physically different, it won't work. AMD has a tendency to just re-brand one of their gaming GPUs as firepro and just alter the drivers. I'm sure nvidia might make some small tweaks here and there to deliberately prevent people from cheating.

Performance has proven to be significant, but of course it heavily depends on what software you're testing. If you're playing games, performance will most certainly drop.

 

A 16GB GPU is a bit of a misnomer, no?

A 16GB graphics card maybe...